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Is our gaming review system broken? (Image via @daylife)

My colleagues Paul Tassi and Dave Thier both have excellent pieces up today on the issue of gaming journalism and the widely-held belief that many gaming journalists are either 'beholden' to the gaming industry or are systematically steered into softballing reviews due to industry pressure.

Paul isn't so sure. He argues that contra to the corporate-puppet theory, game critics have simply forgotten what it means to be a fan:

The main issue I think gaming journalism is suffering from right now is fatigue. Some of the veterans in the industry have been doing this so long, they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a fan, which often results in a very strong and obvious disconnect with their readers. At many sites, it seems that the writers are at times purposefully picking fights with their audience now, either through baiting or just poor attempts at trying to have “attitude.” It’s strange and sad to see, and is a problem that needs to be addressed at many of these places. [...]

I think remembering what it’s like to be a player, not just a critic, is a niche that we’ve found here at Forbes, and we have the additional responsibility to try to provide analysis that ties issues back to what it means for the company’s bottom line.

Paul also notes that we should avoid leaping to conclusions about motive. Accusing a reviewer who gave Mass Effect 3 a perfect score of being in the pocket of EA is unfair and unhelpful. It trades in a good argument for ad hominem. I agree. More on this in a moment.

Meanwhile Dave argues that many game reviewers just want games to be great. There's a buzz and an excitement surrounding the whole process of reviewing games and being a participant in the gaming universe that leads to the donning of rosy-tinted glasses:

For a case study, we’ll zoom into Gears of War 3, and the realm of subjective opinion. I thought this game was terrible. When I played Gears of War 3, I saw a slick shooter with a responsive engine appropriate to a long-honed blockbuster series. I also saw an utterly boring title devoid of soul or style, embarrassingly marred by ham-handed attempts at emotional dreck.

Here’s the subtitle for IGN’s Gears of War 3 review: “Does Gears of War 3 live up to the hype? Duh. Of course it does. Let’s chainsaw some fools!”

Hard-hitting stuff.

When it came to the narrative and writing, features of the game Epic had clearly tried to focus on, reviewers either praised it or found some way to say that it didn’t matter. Here’s Gamespot: “Gears of War 3 delivers some truly poignant moments and boasts some of the best storytelling ever seen in a shooter.”

The problem isn't money or ad-dollars, Dave writes. "The big problem is less sinister than that, though no less dangerous. We just really like games. And we want to like games."

I am an unabashed optimist most of the time. I believe in the fundamental goodness of human nature.

Remaining zen about game-blogging is obviously not going to be as easy as I assumed. I took a hiatus from gaming for several years, and now that I’m back I see that not only the games evolved – the political landscape of gaming and the gaming industry has evolved as well.

So navigating this space will be tricky. Bear with me. I’m not out to topple giants. Like most gamers, I’m out to enjoy the games I write about first and foremost. And like most bloggers, I hope to point awkwardly toward the truth and revise my opinions when presented with new evidence.

The case of Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired by GameSpot for a bad review of a game, is simply the most obvious way this conflict has played out.

Let's look at some other ways that this can occur, often under the radars of even the people involved.

1. Gaming companies who advertise on gaming websites and in gaming magazines are at once clients and subjects of those publications.

If BioWare and EA have paid top dollar to plaster a bunch of ads all across a gaming website, there is almost certainly an underlying and likely unspoken pressure to give the games good reviews, especially blockbusters like Mass Effect 3.

This is an intractable problem. Nobody is suggesting that sites should refuse advertising dollars from developers in the gaming industry. It makes perfect sense to place this kind of ad on a website geared toward gaming. The sites need revenue, and the game publishers need a place to promote their product.

Whether or not ad money influences decisions about review scores, it's impossible to avoid this perception. When you read a perfect review of a game, and ads for that game are plastered all around it, is it any wonder if alarm bells go off?

2. Journalists form both personal and professional relationships with their subjects.

I haven't been doing this long enough to have formed any sort of relationship with anyone in the industry - or really anyone in gaming journalism for that matter. But the nature of journalism often requires that journalists and bloggers form some sort of relationship with the people in the industry they cover.

This can mean that friendships are formed between journalists and business people or politicians and those relationships can influence what a journalist is willing to say or write. Maybe this is out of a sense of admiration or maybe it's done without even realizing it's being done in the first place.

For instance, if you've spent the last couple months talking to excited members of a game's development team, playing demos, talking about the game maybe you're less willing to see its flaws when it launches. Maybe you've known these people for years. Either way, relationships color everything we do in this life, and journalists are no different.

3. Access is precious.

I have no idea beyond rumor and speculation the extent to which access is given or withheld based on critics' reviews of games. Will a bad review or a more critical site overall find itself left out in the cold when it comes time for the next big launch? Will access to interviews or other sources be limited to sites that write critically of a studio or its games?

Even if none of this actually occurs, certainly the worry that access might be cut off must worry many sites and reviewers.

In a sense, access and relationships are one and the same. The closer a journalist becomes to their subject, the more personal that relationship becomes. With better relationships comes better access. The impulse to not "betray" people by offering up a bad review must be very strong.

Add to this other perks like invites to parties, review copies of games, etc. and you start to see how a problem surfaces unintentionally.